Lately I've noticed a minor spate of locally-set titles appearing in the two genres I order for the library-- romance and speculative fiction. What I find the most curious about this current crop of novels is that, as far as I've been able to determine, none of the authors are local to our area. (Thomas Olde Heuvelt isn't even from this continent-- he's Dutch.)

With the publication earlier this week of Best of My Love, number 20 in her Fool's Gold series, author Susan Mallery has brought the most extensive and popular small-town romance series since Robyn Carr's Virgin River to a close. With 22 novels (two Christmas titles were considered "in-betweeners"), 6 e-only novellas, and a storified cookbook, Mallery has given us plenty of opportunities to get to know the residents of Fool's Gold, California, that small (fictional) town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada that couldn't seem to hold on to its men... until they started falling in love with them. To my surprise, I discovered that Fool's Gold hasn't actually been around that long-- Mallery only started the series in 2010, but made up for lost time by publishing an impressive 4 to 5 titles per year.

Are you trepidatious about Trump? Not happy with Hillary? Over your crush on Cruz? Are you just not "feeling the Bern"? You may not be alone. A lot of people have been expressing their disenchantment with the American political process of late. Happily, Speculative Fiction is here to remind you... things could always be worse.